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Home / Business

More directors to leave new look SkyCity

Owen Hembry
By Owen Hembry
Online Business Editor·
5 Jul, 2007 05:00 PM4 mins to read

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Rod McGeoch joined the SkyCity board in 2002. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Rod McGeoch joined the SkyCity board in 2002. Photo / Kenny Rodger

KEY POINTS:

SkyCity chairman Rod McGeoch expects some board members to resign soon, but says their departures will be unrelated to the company's troubles which forced managing director Evan Davies out.

McGeoch said the gaming company had one disappointing six-month performance this year and had lived with significant regulatory change.

Institutional investors are understood to have been lobbying for a change of managing director, but McGeoch said he had not received complaints about the board.

"I've seen a number of institutional shareholders in the last four or five months and none of them have asked me to consider raising the issue [of director performance] with the non-executive directors. Not one of them."

A search was under way for two new directors to full current vacancies, but there was no reason for existing board members to stand down, McGeoch said.

"I think that we've got a board of very capable people in a challenging time that are up to the task."

However, the current directors had been there a long time "and they're telling me they're not going to stay much longer".

He did not specify which directors were planning to leave, but said no specific arrangements had been made.

Davies' departure last week from both the SkyCity board and the managing director position came a month after plans to cut costs by $33 million during the next 18 months, axe 230 jobs, sell underperforming assets and upgrade gaming facilities in Auckland were announced.

A strategy which included buying cinemas, other casinos and internet gaming firm Canbet had been criticised by commentators and investors in the past two years.

The share price jumped 18c the day Davies was dropped but some investors are also understood to be looking for changes in the boardroom.

Australian-based McGeoch planned to stand again for board election but was unsure about a further term after that.

There was no question that the board was responsible for company performance, McGeoch said.

"It generally delivers that by selecting a chief executive, that's one of the most important things it does," he said. "I'm certainly not running away from the overall responsibility for it."

Deputy chairman Patsy Reddy said she did not intend to be a director in the long-run but would see out her current term.

Dryden Spring, who was appointed in 2003, said he was not planning to leave in light of Davies' departure "but you know it's over to the shareholders. Every board I'm on has a look at its composition each year and ensures that it has plans and process to ensure that some renewal is under way and SkyCity's no different than that".

Bill Trotter was appointed to the board in 2000, while Elmar Toime became a director in 1996. London-based Toime has travelled to Auckland to undertake the interim role of executive director.

Tyndall Investment domestic equities manager Rickey Ward said maybe it was time to consider changes to a board which had seen little movement for a number of years.

"Their investments in a number of assets offshore have been poor, they haven't met their required rate of return, both internally and from the markets expectations," Ward said.

"The board has to take responsibility for that because they have signed off the approval to go ahead with these acquisitions."

Simon Botherway, of Brook Asset Management, said he would be surprised if there were not some changes on the board which had endorsed an unsuccessful management strategy.

"We're never in favour of wholesale changes except in the most extreme situations," Botherway said. "I don't really think that's the situation here but we would expect there to be new blood on that board in due course."

Botherway said Davies had done a fantastic job over a number of years, but added: "A couple of things haven't really come off for them so it's probably no real surprise that the architect of that strategy has to step aside."

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